One of the things people point to most frequently when making a list of the positive aspects of living in America is that people have the freedom to be whatever they want to be when they grow up. The question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” contains a number of cultural beliefs upon which social reality is built. The fact is that no one has the ability to become anything more than a human being. However, inherent in the question is the belief that one can rise above their own humanity by earning social privilege in the form of money. Consequently, human beings in this society are both defined by, and assigned value, according to the jobs they perform.

People want to believe in social equality and equal opportunity. However, telling children that they can be whatever they want to be when they grow up is not the way to achieve it. Realistically, people are not all created equal in terms of talents and abilities. A child with an I.Q. of 90 will never be able to become a doctor, lawyer or physicist. Sadly, all over the globe, including the U.S., malnutrition due to poverty has increased the number of children with intellectual limitations that will result in fewer life options for them. In a society which spends more than the rest of the world combined on their military, this reduction in options is by design as a tool for military recruitment.

The only way a poor person can hope to attain even a modicum of societal respect is by “serving” their country in the military. Even after agreeing to kill or be killed to preserve American privilege, that modicum of respect consists of little more than token gestures like parades or lip service about providing adequate medical care.

Those without college degrees and jobs that require physical labor are relegated to poverty-level wages and treated as inferiors undeserving of human dignity. They often live in substandard housing, the conditions of which create health problems. Their diets often consist of very few fresh fruits and vegetables, but of cheap fast food, which further contributes to an increase in preventable diseases like diabetes. However, in a health care for profit system, disease becomes synonymous with job creation and increased profits for the medical industry.

People are desperate to have jobs in which they are treated with respect and aren’t reduced to living in poverty. The government has now joined with the higher education industry and together, they are raking in billions of dollars in interest from school loans. Promoting higher education as a way to achieve social equality is little more than extortion on a massive scale. Good grades more often reflect the desire of an institution of higher learning to increase profits than the real ability of the students. Even good grades that are deserved don’t result in making the social connections necessary to get a good job upon graduation. Those connections are made at vacation ski resorts, where poor students can’t afford to go. However, these institutions will continue to profit as long as adequate housing, health care and human dignity are being held for ransom.

We the people have as much power as we are willing to take responsibility for, and sadly, it looks like this might be the most irresponsible nation on earth. Rather than going into debt to further profit banks, a corrupt government, and increasingly corrupt institutions of “higher learning”, we need to learn to treat one another with respect and human dignity. While my I.Q. may not qualify me to become a nuclear physicist, neither should it disqualify me from humane living conditions. The person that collects my garbage is more important to my quality of life than a professional sports star or a lawyer, yet receives a pittance in comparison. People that care for children, perhaps the most important job in the world, are paid a paltry sum that scarcely allows them to afford to care for their own children.

People must stop believing that superiority can be purchased, and that the ability to hire people to do work that one finds unpleasant such as cooking, cleaning, or weeding, entitles them to exploit the poverty of others, thereby maintaining it. Deliberately maintaining a system of poverty and desperation in order to force others to do work they find unpleasant is not a sign of superiority, but rather, a sign of the mindset of a slave owner. One not need be intelligent to be a slave owner, merely ruthless and cruel. One need not even be intelligent to be rich—but can merely claim ownership of knowledge and hold it for ransom. Why does Bill Gates suddenly come to mind? ​Society must sever the connection between money and respect, neither of which, too often, are truly earned. Lasting societal change must originate with a shift in consciousness from an unquestioning acceptance of unexamined beliefs about some lives being more valuable than others. It is this belief that justifies all war and slavery. We are at a crossroads in history---we must challenge the slave-owner mindset and make peace with the rest of the world. The only way to hold on to the belief in a collective superiority deserving of slave labor is by perpetually bombing the rest of the world so that the slaves aren’t able to create their own nuclear bombs. Despite what the Bible says, heaven isn’t a gated community. Gated communities are actually a by-product of slavers creating hell on earth.